Filling in the Blanks/Re-imagining the Hero

The Afterlife of Beowulf

MS Cotton Vitellius A.xv• Vellum (stretched animal skin) manuscript is dated

around 1000 C.E. It shows the hands of two scribes, both using the Late West Saxon dialect of Old English.

• Found in small (5 x 8), unassuming volume containing two codices bound together. Beowulf occupies 140 pages of the second codex (known as the Nowell Codex, after Laurence Nowell, an Old English scholar and first owner of the MS).

• So named after the library of Sir Robert Cotton, who owned the manuscript. In 1786, it was accessioned by the British Museum.

MS Cotton Vitellius A.xv, cont.

• Cotton placed his books on shelves that were topped by the busts of Roman emperors (Vitellius, Tiberius, Nero, etc.)

• The MS was damaged by fire in 1731 while housed in Westminster. It suffered charred edges, some of which dissolved portions of margins and text.

• Beowulf takes up 140 pages of the codex.

A Sense of the Debates

• Oral vs. Textual• “Pagan” vs. Christian• The Monstrous• The Name• Structure: Rise/Fall (Tolkien)

Sapientia/Fortitudo (Kaske)

Who is Beowulf?

• Hero of the Geats, a tribe of southwestern Sweden (Gotar).

• Beowulf is the son of Ecgtheow, a man of the Waemundings who marries into the Geatish court of King Hrethel.

• In the time of the poem, Hrethel’s son, Hygelac, is king and Beowulf serves him.

Who is Beowulf, cont.

• Ecgtheow, Beowulf’s father, had earlier been exiled for starting a feud. Hrothgar, the current Danish king—whose hall, Heorot, is being stalked by Grendel—took Ecgtheow in and paid off his enemies.

• Hrothgar sees Beowulf’s arrival at Heorot as an opportunity for the young hero to satisfy the familial debt owed by Ecgtheow.

Envisioning the Hero

Sutton Hoo (Suffolk, England)

And in Performance…